Sam

I dare say I am familiar with the heat greeting the entrants to the outer circle of hell. Does this familiarity ensure a better stay for me in the inner circle? I doubt it. I deem myself experienced in the terrain of the valley of death. Does this mean I am fearless at the idea of the dolorosa? Heavens, no. I heard the deafening silence in the wind that shook the mountain and shattered the rocks. Does this equip me with the virtue to listen in the breeze? I am not certain.  But then, what do I know? All I know is that hundreds of thousands of faithful over centuries, dared the summer’s heat, trod the undulating path and suffered a myriad of discomforts to get to a church in a small town in northern Spain. All I know is that the bones of a man lay in the crypt of that great cathedral. And all I know is that on that journey to embrace the bejewelled statue of this man, the faithful went expecting.  Expecting what? We were asked on day zero, in an invitation to share our motivati...

She is dead.            The phrase I had uttered without hesitation during my time as the resident doctor in Palliative Medicine were the same words I was trying to avoid saying. She, a middle-aged mother of one, on life-support a few wards away from where I stood, had ceased her struggle with  the virus . Sitting before me, occupying a bed each opposite each other were what was left of the woman’s nuclear family. Her son on one side and her husband on the other side of a Covid general ward. The situation where, amidst a global calamity, entire families were admitted to the hospital, where a Psychiatry resident was called upon to care for medically unwell patients, wearing a dehydrating space-suit seemed something out of a dystopian novel. But the terrible update I was privy to wrung me back to the pages of reality.        The nursing staff and I were in possession of the knowledge that the third member (first?) of this small family...